Unanimous decisions by the US Supreme Court are extremely rare these days. But the justices have just handed down a new 9-0 ruling that sends an important message about government’s obligation to protect the free exercise of religion.

Gregory HoltAP
The court ruled that Gregory Holt, a.k.a Abdul Maalik Muhammad, a Muslim inmate in an Arkansas prison, was improperly denied permission to grow a half-inch beard, as he says his faith requires.

Arkansas contended, among other things, that allowing the short beard was a security risk because inmates could hide contraband. Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the decision, dryly noted the prison hadn’t explained why it didn’t just have “the prisoner run a comb through his beard.”

The principle here is the same one propounded by the court in its Hobby Lobby decision on the ObamaCare contraceptive mandate: The government isn’t entitled to an assumption of unlimited deference, even on a legitimate issue like prison security, when religious rights are involved.

In the wake of the Charlie Hebdo massacres highlighting France’s difficulty assimilating its Muslim minority, the court’s decision also underscores a key difference between French and American secularism.

In France, the government makes little or no accommodation to faith. As the Supreme Court reminded Arkansas, in America the Constitution works the other way: it requires reasonable accommodation.

Every sane person appreciates we must discriminate between Islam and radical Islam. Strikes us that respecting the right of a Muslim prisoner to his religious observance is one good way to show we do.